Wait, you saw the picture of an owner's car, and still conclude its not used?
I mean- you quoted my actual words, now seem surprised to find out what they were?
Here they are again
Me said:
I've never seen any production Model 3 use a 970...though I vaguely recall ONE poster saying he had one and everyone been stunned because nobody else had ever reported it in actual use, and AFAIK nobody since has either.
We've seen ONE person post a 970 motor mounted on a car.
Ever.
Every other poster, and it's lots of em, who posted PNs from 2017, 2018, and most early 2019 Model 3s- of all trims- posted a 980.
This is a mass produced item, with a documented part number in their database.
That second statement is true (it's in the catalog)
We have no idea of it being mass produced.
If it was that mass produced it's likely it would've shown up in more than 1 car ever the forum is aware of.
Tesla changes parts and does weird one-off and small batch stuff all the time though.
Remember the early Model Ys that came with a weird fake wooden brace on the LCC?
Of course it was widely used, companies don't just add parts to their databases, qualify them, and ship 1 example to 1 customer. Itt might be rare or restricted to the early MR and/or the LR RWD models, but it definitely had to have been used, for us to see examples on the internet.
See now I'm wondering at something YOU just said in the same sentence... that it could be "widely used" and also "rare"
It absolutely seems rare... we've seen one, ever, mounted on a car.
A quick google search also pulled a 970 for sale...
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 2017 2018 2019 Tesla Model 3 Rear Drive Electric Drivetrain Engine Motor Unit at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
And now one specific one NOT in a car
FWIW- I did check, they're at least not the same serial # as each other... so now we know Tesla made at least
two of these
They were definitely used in cars, very early examples.
You keep saying that.
Yet the one we saw in a a real car is a LR RWD from 2018, meaning it was made at the earliest in the second year of production.... I'm certainly willing to buy they tried it out in a tiny handful of say late '17/early '18s, so few you virtually never see em... but I think mass produced might be overstating things a bit...and certainly the
vast majority of all Model 3s made in '17 and '18 are 980 rears (as well as a decent chunk of early 2019s)
This Reddit post seems to imply the 970 came on the MR model, perhaps before it started using the same parts from the LR, the MR is one of the lowest production count trims, it also seemed to be built originally from left over or low cost parts before being canceled:
That link appears to be one guy claiming they must be different because the parts catalog has 2 different parts.
And someone else replying and saying he's wrong and the MRs got the same HW as the LRs- which is what I'm also saying (and which every pic from an MR owner I've ever seen on here also says)
MRs weren't introduced until the Model 3 had been in production for well over a full year.... I guess we could quibble over how "early" we wanna define 'early'
But I've never seen an MR with a 970.
Tagging
@AlanSubie4Life as he was pretty heavily invovled in the really long rear motor thread back when it was active that when on for hundreds of posts with only the 1 in-a-car 970 sighting I'm aware of in case he's got more recent info he could add.
